Collapse The Sky – White Flags

By RingMaster Review on June 29, 2022 • ( 0 )

COLLAPSE THE SKY is a band which is unerringly ascending the ranks of British metal, the quintet already earning great praise and a matching reputation through their previous two full-lengths and explosive live prowess. The recent release of new album, White Flags, announces that the Norwich hailing metallers are ready to take greater steps towards the fore of the UK metal scene and reactions and the acclaim already gathered around the release shows a great many are in agreement.

White Flags is a white hot cauldron of the band’s particular voracious riff bearing technically crafted sound, a proposition which marries various flavours and essences in its individuality and maybe best hinted at by the inspirations the band embraces, artists such as Slipknot, The Ghost Inside, Lamb of God and Parkway Drive among them. Within their 2016 debut album, Seven Eyes, and two years later, Consumed, COLLAPSE THE SKY showed their songwriting and music was a formidable and fascinating proposal with the latter potently building on its predecessor. Now with White Flags they have moved on again, the release escalating all the rich aspects of the last album and revealing new traits and imagination to forge its own striking presence and pleasure.

From first to last breath, White Flags is a voracious affair, a conflict yet union of sound, emotion and tension expressing the same in its lyrical and vocal contemplations whether worldly, social or of intimate origins. The album opens with an epic air, opener Foundations casting a war clouded saga of suggestion before settling into its confrontation of predacious riffs, sabre rattling rhythms and vocal incitement. Equally sonic grooves and melodic threads entwine song and ears, the guitars of Flynn Green and David Lawrence in union and conflict with their respective resourceful tempting and insurgent trespass. By the minute, new twists and textures align the tempest, the biting beats of Luke Fowler combative incitement throughout just as Lee Margaillan’s throat raw roars.

It is a great start which the following Breathe escalates, its initial hornet nest spun incitement and predatory bassline from Karl Morse swift addiction here as too the nu-metal sired grooves and inclinations quickly following as the track expands and blossoms in enterprise.

One early favourite is followed by another as Worship sets out its thrash metal nagging and groove metal unpredictability; the surges of heavy metal and metal core which align its invention further evidence to the diverse nature of the COLLAPSE THE SKY sound and its fascination as endorsed by the album’s title track. Eddies of grooves drag willing attention into the song’s depths and dispute; sonic enterprise wrapping that deeper attention and exploration as again rhythms rally and explode upon the senses. Moments of clean vocal and melodic intrigue surprise and further spark the imagination within another seriously potent encounter.

Survive is a brutal trespass next, a barbarous proposition with waves of dextrous craft and tempting to its tempest while Dream Catcher from a harmonious seduction springs its own incessant insurgency led by waspish grooves and esurient rhythms. Like a sinister dervish, it twists and turns with senses entwining resourcefulness but also between those consumptive moments reveals melodic and atmospheric beauty if one aflame with sonic tension. Again unpredictable turns and invention equip the track with greater captivation, enterprise just as freely embraced by the following pair of Get What You Give and After Effect; the first a devious exploit of the imagination with its open dissension and menace but also the exposure of its almost surreal and psychotic inclinations. Its successor is almost like ground zero to what has come and passed so far within the release, its canvas apocalyptic and starkly industrially dark with a great demonic Anti-Clone-esque hue but sharing its own explosions of emotive and sonic antipathy, ultimate favourite track honours going its way.

Blessing is another track which bullies and brutalises yet shares some of the most inspiring incitements upon the album, guitars and vocals heading the orchestration of the imagination as bestial basslines and vicious beats drive its incursion with its successor, Who I am, setting its trap in just as fertile and gripping fashion but with senses consuming malice. It is a song which is almost kaleidoscopic in its flavours though, every twist and turn of imagination bringing new flavours and invention to contemplate.

Concluded by the electronically cast and atmospherically nurtured Let It In, a clean cut ballad with hellacious tendencies, White Flags is a striking and increasingly addictive encounter which we have devoured with greater greed by the listen, the release exposing new aspects and nuances within its creative rencounter each time. Quite simply, the album is confirmation that indeed COLLAPSE THE SKY is one of British metal’s rising powers.

White Flags is out now; available @ https://collapsethesky.bandcamp.com/